Toronto, ON, March 3, 2011 - Avenza Systems Inc., producers of geospatial plugins for Adobe Creative Suite, including Geographic Imager for Adobe Photoshop, is pleased to announce the release of MAPublisher 8.4 for Adobe Illustrator. The latest version of this mapmaking software used to produce high quality maps from GIS data for both print and electronic distribution now includes a powerful thematic mapping feature called MAP Themes. Like the name implies, it produces dot density maps and uses stylesheets to symbolize choropleth maps based on various types of data classification. In addition, it can easily create custom charts using data attribute values.

"We went back to the drawing board and redesigned how styles are implemented in MAPublisher,” said Ted Florence, President of Avenza Systems. “MAP Themes is an exciting way to help you visualize GIS data. It offers a lot of flexibility in mixing graphic styles, swatches, symbols, rules and attributes. In addition, we've introduced support for new import formats including ArcGIS map documents and personal geodatabase for Mac OS. This has expanded the use of MAPublisher as a premiere cartographic and map-design platform.” he added.

New features and enhancements of MAPublisher 8.4 for Adobe Illustrator

New thematic mapping features including support for pie and bar charts and dot density maps

New import services: Web Feature Service (WFS) and Web Map Service (WMS)

New support for import formats including GPX and Microsoft Excel

Import support for Esri ArcMap documents (.mxd)

Esri Basic Personal Geodatabase format support is now available for Mac

Various other user interface improvements and performance enhancements to improve usability

More about MAPublisher for Illustrator

MAPublisher for Illustrator is powerful map production software for creating cartographic-quality maps from GIS data. Developed as a suite of plug-ins for Adobe Illustrator, MAPublisher leverages the superior graphics capabilities of this graphics design software for working with GIS data and producing high-quality maps with efficiency.

MAPublisher 8.4 for Illustrator is available free of charge to all MAPublisher customers with an active maintenance subscription and as an upgrade for non-maintenance users at $599 USD. New licenses are $1399 USD. Academic, floating and volume pricing is also available. Prices include one year of full maintenance. Details are available at www.avenza.com.

More about Avenza Systems Inc.

Avenza Systems Inc. is an award-winning, privately held corporation that provides cartographers and GIS professionals with powerful software tools for making better maps. In addition to software offerings for Mac and Windows users, Avenza offers value-added data sets, product training and consulting services as well as the PDF Maps app for using geospatial PDF files on iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch devices. Visit www.avenza.com for more details.